San Francisco — April 11, 2011 — Virgin America, the airline that is reinventing domestic flying, today announces the launch of its new national multi-media “Breath of Fresh Airline” advertising and marketing campaign. The campaign is designed to convey the young airline’s hip, innovative and fresh guest experience. Launched in August 2007, the California-based Virgin America has attracted a loyal following of travelers and social media fans for its inventive use of design, custom-designed cabins, high-tech amenities and stylish service. Since its 2007 launch, Virgin America has captured the “Best Domestic Airline” title in Condé Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards and Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards for the past three consecutive years.

The “Breath of Fresh Airline” campaign brings the experience of flying Virgin America to life with compelling, engaging, rich media — showcasing the airline’s unique amenities, from the unrivalled breadth of entertainment content available on its touch-screen in-flight entertainment platform Red™, to its inventive design elements including its signature cabin “moodlighting” which transitions across 12 shades based on outside light and is designed to relax and inspire travelers. The campaign uses an airplane window to frame its cheeky declarations of Virgin America’s mission to reinvent the typical domestic flight experience with the best in design, entertainment, food and service. The campaign also conveys the airline’s status as a consumer champion that is fighting for the flyer – not just with competitive fares, but through an in-flight experience that is anything but the typical domestic airline “cattle car.” The campaign was created by Virgin America’s advertising agency-of-record, the San Francisco-based Eleven Inc.

“From the start, Virgin America’s mission has not only been to fight for the consumer but to bring the style and fun back to air travel,” said Porter Gale, Vice President of Marketing at Virgin America. “We believe the journey can be as enjoyable as the destination. We wanted this campaign to not only convey that point of view and our Virgin sense of humor and style, but also show flyers just how much our unique experience has transformed the status quo of flying.”

The multi-layered and image-driven campaign launches today with video, in-cinema, online video banners, iPad, out of home (OOH) and print advertising. The “Breath of Fresh Airline” campaign provides a glimpse of how Virgin America has made flying fun again for guests with the aircraft window acting as the central element in many of the ads tying the creative together. In print ads, the window acts as a frame displaying a single moment on a Virgin America flight. The campaign includes Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) interactive boards that invite train riders to snap a picture of themselves in an empty window and share the picture with Virgin America on Twitter using the #VXChi hashtag.

As part of the campaign, Virgin America also partnered with sister company, Los Angeles based Virgin Produced and Stun Creative to create unique, humorous videos that allow viewers to experience the airline’s moodlit cabins and amenities like fleetwide WiFi, power outlets, seat-to-seat chat, on-demand food ordering and the largest in-flight entertainment library in the U.S. skies. Virgin America has invited members of the public to help decide which video will be featured on Red, by voting on their favorites at Squabbler.com, the new online debate forum from the creators of AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. The site gives people a chance to post their 30-second arguments about any topic and allows the site’s audience to vote for and select a winner. Virgin America will give away one roundtrip flight to a voter who leaves the most creative and original comment on the Virgin America Squabbler video page. For official rules, please visit:http://virginamerica.com/html/squabbler_video_comment_contest.pdf

Virgin America also developed a flight trailer – a first for the airline – that provides a movie trailer-length peek inside the Virgin America experience that will run in-cinema.

“It is hard to verbally convey how different our in-flight experience is. Every day we receive posts, Twitpics, videos and other reviews from our flyers about how much they love our in-cabin experience – some coming live from 35,000 feet via our fleetwide WiFi,” added Gale. “This campaign is essentially providing snapshots of the same real-life guest experiences we hear about every day.”

Mr. Courtney Buechert, President, Eleven, stated, “Virgin America is an iconic brand with a passionate, loyal following. It really is a breath of fresh air. We're excited to continue to amplify the conversation around the Virgin brand, this time round with engaging, entertaining videos and digital.”
Creative headlines tell much of the story: “Landing has never been so bittersweet”, “Flying has never looked better”, “You’re far too important to fly bored” and “Life’s too short for dull air travel.” Continuing the tongue-in-cheek humor of previous campaigns, “For the People” and “Hairdryer,” “Breath of Fresh Airline” features guests doing what they do best onboard Virgin America – having fun.

Virgin America’s new Airbus A320 Family aircraft feature custom-designed mood-lit cabins, fleetwide WiFi, standard power outlets near every seat and comfortable leather seating. The Red™ in-flight entertainment platform offers every guest their own seat-back touch-screen entertainment platform with 30 on-demand films, 24 channels of live TV, premium TV like HBO, interactive Google Maps, videogames, seat-to-seat chat, music videos, a 3000 MP3 catalog and the ability to build and save a personalized playlist in-flight, a digital Shop platform and an on-demand menu – so flyers can order a cocktail or meal right from their seatback any time during a flight. With sleek airport spaces that offer a concierge desk look and feel, Virgin America moves to its new home base at San Francisco International Airport’s newly designed Terminal 2 on April 14, 2011. T2 offers features that mirror the airline’s own focus on design – including a stress-free “Recompose” area post-security, mood-lit ticket counters and beautiful living room-like gates.

EDITORS NOTE: Virgin America is a U.S. owned, controlled and operated airline. It is an entirely separate company from Virgin Atlantic. Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is a minority share investor in Virgin America.

About Virgin America: Headquartered in California and launched in August 2007, Virgin America offers guests attractive fares and a host of innovative features aimed at reinventing air travel. The airline’s new aircraft offer interactive in-flight entertainment systems and power outlets near every seat for electronic gear. Virgin America offers Gogo™ in-flight internet service on every flight and hosts the largest in-flight entertainment library in the North American skies via the touch-screen Red™ platform. In just three over years flying, the carrier was named “Best Domestic Airline” in the Condé Nast Traveler2008, 2009 and 2010 Readers’ Choice Awards and “Best Domestic Airline” in Travel + Leisure’s 2008, 2009 and 2010 World’s Best Awards. The airline’s current base of operations is San Francisco International Airport’s (SFO) International Terminal. On April 14, 2011, the airline will grow to become an anchor tenant at SFO’s new Terminal 2. Virgin America flies to San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Seattle, Las Vegas, San Diego, Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Cabos, Cancun and Chicago (as of May 25, 2011).